User:TransporterMan/Sandbox/10

Wikipedia Editing Cheatsheet

Getting Started

Sign up and log in

Go to the log in link and either log in or sign up and then log in. Always edit signed in.

Basic Considerations

Basic rules of editing and creating articles

1. Everything has to be cited. (In theory that's not absolutely true, in practice it is.)
2. Citations must be to reliable sources, defined as third party sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. Blogs, self-published sources (with a few exceptions), webpages which only have a few authors and which do not have an editorial board, and webpages to which anyone or just about anyone can contribute can contribute generally don't qualify. Online sources are slightly preferred, but print-only sources are perfectly acceptable if they are reliable. Online sources may be behind a paywall. Wikipedia articles cannot be used as citations for other articles.
3. For a subject to be notable and for an article about it to survive there must be multiple — two at the very minimum, more is better — citations to reliable sources. Don't count primary and self-published sources in making that determination.
4. Nothing from a source may be analyzed or synthesized, the source cited must actually say in so many words the proposition that it's being cited to support. Combining facts from the same or different sources to support a result not stated in either source alone is not allowed, whether directly or by implication. Good rule of thumb: If you have to explain how a source supports the thing you want to use it for, or make an argument for how it supports it, then it's probably not adequate.
5. While the citation text must support the article text, the article text can't just be copied word for word from the source or be a close paraphrase of the source. Quoting is allowed, in moderation and for good cause, but must be specifically attributed to the source.
6. Citation form: Wikipedia has no required citation form (such as MLA, APA, or the like) so long as an average reader gets enough information that they can clearly identify the source and find the relevant part in the source. If you're using ProveIt, the choice of the right kind of source form and filling in the blanks properly aren't critical so long as you get that much information in and it shows up in the citation. If you're not sure of the correct form or how the blanks are to be filled in, just take your best shot at it and then preview it to see how it looks.
7. Citation placement: One citation can support any number of sentences in a paragraph or, in theory, multiple paragraphs (though I don't recommend that). If most of the material in a paragraph is covered by one citation, but you need to put something in the middle that's supported by a different citation, put the wider citation both before and after the middle stuff. Wikipedia's guidelines don't much like the idea of putting citations in the middle of a sentence, they prefer piling all of them for that sentence at the end of the sentence, but go ahead and put them in the middle if that eliminates confusion.
8. Neutral point of view: All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view and reflect the balance of reliable sources about the subject matter. They must neither be laudatory nor condemnatory, except to the extent that's reflected in the sources. Avoid promotional-sounding language at all costs.
9. Images must not have copyright issues, which ordinarily means that they must either be public domain, permission must be given to Wikipedia by the creator (which requires giving up most of the rights to the image), or fair use must be satisfied.
10. Always give an edit summary.
11. Don't worry about the "minor edit" checkbox: it's no big deal. It is possible to get in trouble with other users by checking it when it shouldn't be checked, but almost impossible to get in trouble for not checking it when it should.
12. Always use the preview button to check your work before clicking the save button unless you're working in your sandbox or on your own user page (and even then it's a good idea, so as to get in the habit of doing it in other places).
13. Write the lede (and body, if you've got enough material) and all references of an article first. Don't worry about an infobox, images, see also's, categories, or any of the other stuff until after you've got the meat of the article written.

Layout

Only the lede section* and the references are absolutely required, all else is optional or can be added later by you or others.

The usual layout of an article is:

• Infobox
• Main image (if not in infobox)
• Lede section
• (Table of contents — automatically inserted by system if there's enough sections)
• Body sections (if not a stub)
• Works or publications (for biographies only)
• See also
• References (the references are placed in the article text, but they show up here, see below)
• Further reading (should not duplicate anything in references)
• External links (see above, there are extensive rules for what can be used here)
• Geographical coordinates (if not in Infobox and if appropriate)
• Categories (use the HotCat gadget if you want to include categories)
• Stub template (if a stub; syntax: {{stub}})

* An article with a lede, but no body, is a stub.

Sandbox mechanics

Wikipedia automatically creates a personal sandbox for you when you sign up. You can find it by clicking the sandbox link at the top or sidebar of a Wikipedia page. Or the direct url is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yourusername/sandbox. What you put in your sandbox will not ordinarily be edited or deleted by other users, unless it contains material which is absolutely prohibited by Wikipedia (negative or controversial unsourced statements about a living person, copyright violations, attack pages, or legal threats are the most common issues of that kind). If you're going to use it to draft a new article put {{userspace draft}} at the top of the page.

Your sandbox is your free space in which to practice editing or develop articles or parts of articles. So long as you don't put stuff in it that cannot be on Wikipedia at all, such as copyright violations, it is very unlikely that any other editor or administrator will pay any attention whatsoever to what you have in your sandbox. In theory, you shouldn't store anything there indefinitely without at least occasionally editing it but that's not likely to cause a problem or a loss.

• The easiest way to get to your basic sandbox is by, while logged in, clicking the "sandbox" link somewhere around the edges of your screen (usually at the top). If you've not started your sandbox, doing so will take you to an editing page to get it started.

• You can also get to your sandbox by, while logged in, typing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:YourUserName/sandbox in your browser's URL bar (note the lower-case "s" in sandbox, it's required).

• If you need multiple sandboxes, you can create them by, while logged in, typing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:YourUserName/sandbox/newsandboxname in your browser's URL bar, where the /newsandboxname part name is a name you make up for your new sandbox (the name does not have to be lower case, but it is case-sensitive). Hit enter and a screen will come up saying Wikipedia doesn't have a page by that name. Click the "Start the..." line to create the page.

• A digression about article titles and sandbox names: The title of articles published "live" in mainspace is determined by the "Internet" name of the page in the URL of that page. For example, the article Dog has a URL of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog and the name of the article at the top of the page is autogenerated from the URL. In other words, when you look at the Dog article and it has the word "Dog" in big black letters at the top of the page, that title is not part of the text of the page. It shows up there "magicially" by reason of the page having the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog. Sandbox pages, however, do not generate a title. The URL name of the page will not show up in the text of the page. If you want to give the page a title use =Title= on a line by itself at the top of the page. (But if it's an article draft remember that you'll have to remove that line when you move the page to mainspace.)

• If you create additional sandboxes it is up to you to remember and keep up with the URL's of pages you create, as they are not linked or recorded anywhere. One way to do that is to stop using your original sandbox page as a sandbox and turn it into an index page for your additional sandboxes. To create a link to your additional sandbox page, you can use [[User:YourUserName/sandbox/newsandboxname|newsandboxname]] or just the shortcut [[/newsandboxname]].

• Sandbox headers: It's not a bad idea to put a header at the top of your sandbox page identifying it as either a sandbox page or as a draft article. Put this code at the top of the page above everything else, on a line by itself, to do that: {{user sandbox}} or {{userspace draft}}.

• Publishing a draft article from your sandbox: You've written a draft article and now want to take it "live." There are two ways to do that:

• Have the article reviewed through the draft article process. Put the {{userspace draft}} code at the top of the page and save it, then click the "Submit your draft for review!" button in the header. An experienced user will eventually review your page (which may be moved or copied from your sandbox to the draft namespace for that purpose) and either publish it to mainspace or make recommendations for improvement. If recommendations are made, you will need to follow them and resubmit your page for another review (there will be instructions with the recommendations on how to do that).

• Simply publish your article to mainspace and see if it survives. Remove the main title and any sandbox headers and save the page, then use the instructions at Wikipedia:Moving_a_page#How to move a page and chose "Article" as the destination. Articles published in this way are subject to review by a group of volunteers called the New Page Patrol who, unlike the draft reviewers will not make recommendations for improvement if they don't believe your article is sufficient to meet Wikipedia's standards for an article. They'll simply nominate it for deletion. For that reason, it's a good idea to keep a copy of your article on your computer or in a different sandbox page than the one you moved it from.

Which to use? I recommend the second one. I find the draft reviewers to often be too picky and their recommendations less than really helpful. Worse, once you're in the draft review process it can be complicated to break out of it and change to the second one. The downside of the second one is that you've got to be pretty sure your draft article meets Wikipedia's rules for an acceptable article, especially Verifiability and Notability and be free of copyright violations. But if it doesn't and it gets deleted before you can fix it, if you've kept a copy you can work on it and try again (but be ultra sure that you've got it right; people start getting snippy and abrupt if you don't and it's nominated for deletion a second time).

Notes and Links

• Most important policies and guidelines:

• Conflict of interest — Rule defining when you shouldn't edit Wikipedia.
• Verifiability — Defines what information can be in Wikipedia, whose obligation it is to prove that it can be, and when inadequately sourced material can be removed
• Notability — Along with a bunch of sub–guidelines defines what subjects justify stand-alone articles
• No original research — Riffs on Verifiability to make clear that material has to be properly sourced and that you can't just put information into Wikipedia without it having first been reliably published, makes clear that you can't combine sources to stand for something that's not plainly stated in either one individually, and clarifies the limits on using primary sources
• Neutral point of view — Important principle, but not many clear hard-and-fast rules with the exception of rules on undue weight and fringe subjects
• Copyright. Unfortunately there's several policies that need to be considered to get a good grasp on this. Using copyrighted work from others and most of the material linked in the "Guidelines" and "Advice" sections of Wikipedia copyright are the main elements
• Biographies of living persons — Special rules which apply when writing about living persons, mainly, with exceptions, that contentious material (think "negative") must be particularly well-sourced, that public records and self-published sources can't be used as sources for living people, that information about crimes shouldn't be used unless there has been a conviction, and that caution (and specific steps) should be taken about people who are relatively unknown, notable only for a single event, or notable only because they were a minor participant in a notable event
• Consensus — How decisions are made in Wikipedia.
• Manual of Style — How things are formatted and done, technically, in Wikipedia.
• Bold, revert, discuss cycle and Dispute resolution — Tips and guidelines on how to deal with avoiding and working through disputes
• What Wikipedia is not — what it says
• Edit warring and the three-revert rule and Page ownership — Probably the two most important conduct policies for newcomers
• List of additional policies of varying importance: Wikipedia policies and guidelines
• Why the Five Pillars and Ignore all rules aren't listed above: While they're the foundational principles of Wikipedia, they're much too general to be of any practical use in figuring out how to deal with day-to-day situations.

• Event coordinator — The user right and how-to.
• Wikimedia Commons
• Visual Editor — Most important for what it won't do.
• Code editor cheatsheets: Mine and Wikipedia's

Code editor syntax

Line Wrap, Paragraphs and Headings

Line wrap: Lines automatically wrap in the editor and lines ending in a single carriage return (a single press of the "Enter" key) will also be wrapped as if the line break was not there unless the line ends with <br> or <br /> (not recommended unless needed for a special situation) or unless the first character on the next line is a indent, bullet, numbering, or heading character.

Paragraphs: Paragraphs are usually formed by double spacing (hit your enter key at the end of the paragraph, then hit it again) so there's a blank line between the paragraphs, but indent, bullet, numbering, and heading characters (see below) as the first character in a line will force a paragraph there.

Non-paragraph hard returns: You can also cause a hard line break and/or a paragraph by using the html code <br /> or <br>, but you ought to have a pretty good reason for doing this.

Spaces as the First Character of a Paragraph, Indenting, Bullets, and Numbering

A space as the first character of a paragraph: Creates a plain-text box with limited formatting. You're never going to want that and if you want something similar to it there's better ways of doing it. Just don't.

Indenting: First-line-of-a-paragraph indenting is not done (there are ways of finagling around it, but it's not proper style for the encyclopedia, so don't — and especially don't try to do it by just spacing over, see above). Block indenting (so that all the lines of a paragraph are indented the same amount) is done by placing one or more colons (:) as the very first character of a line, with each additional colon indenting the paragraph a bit more.

Bullets: Are created by using an asterisk(*) either as the first character of a line or after one or more preceding asterisks or colons. So a single asterisk puts a bullet at the left margin and block-indents the following text at the same place two colons would have indented it; two asterisks puts a single bullet (not 2 bullets) at the place where two colons would have started the text and block indents the text where three colons would have done it, and so on. So :* or ** or ::: block indent the text at the same place, but the first two put a single bullet just to the left of the first line. Note that ::* is preferred over *** to retain consistency with how numbering works.

Numbering: Works just like bullets except paragraphs are numbered 1. 2. 3. and so on, but using ### to indent three levels can create inconsistent results, use ::# instead. Also any line break or blank line or indent-level change will reset the numbering to 1 and there is no simple way to reset it to the proper number. Outline-style numbering where there is a hierarchy of letters and numbers cannot be simply achieved.

Text Emphasis and Styling

Emphasis: Italics are invoked by putting two single quote marks before and after the material: ''this'' creates this. Bold facing works the same way except with three marks: '''this''' creates this. Five marks combine the two: '''''this''''' creates this. Underlining can be used (but shouldn't be, because some browsers and computers don't deal with it well) using the html code <u>text</u>. Use of emphasis in article space is generally to be avoided, because it usually gives emphasis to part of the text of an article which is not supported by the underlying sources.

Text size and styling: <big>Large</big>, <small>small</small>, ^superscript, _subscript give: Large, small, ^superscript, _subscript. Text styling such as color and font changes are possible through the use of html code. All of these are to be avoided unless there is a special and specific reason to use them.

Headings

Headings are created by pairs of series of equals marks (=) beginning at the left margin with the first mark as the very first character in the line. A blank line is automatically added both before and after the title, watch out for that and don't double up those lines. The usual formatting puts a space between the words in the title and the equals marks, but that space is removed when the title is shown in the document and it can be simply omitted when you create the title; including it makes the code a little easier to read, however. Note that the Wikipedia standard is to capitalize the first word of an internal heading but only capitalize proper nouns in any following words: "Place of birth" not "Place of Birth" but "Career in Paris" not "Career in paris".

== Title == (two = on each side) creates the primary internal section headings of an article.

=== Title === (three = on each side) creates a subheading.

It's possible to go down to four, five, or six on each side with each one becoming progressively smaller, but that's rarely justified. At six the text is just about the same size as normal bold faced text.

Linking

Linking to an article: Two square brackets: [[article]] links to another Wikipedia article. The full syntax is:

[[article name#section|shortname]]

Where:

• Article name is the complete name of the article exactly as shown at the top of the article, except for capitalization, which need not be followed.
• #section is the exact name of a section title of the article, including the same capitalization, if you want to jump directly there; if you don't, just leave it out
• |shortname is what you want to show in the link.

So [[Atom#Bohr model|Bohr model of the atom]] shows Bohr model of the atom and when clicked jumps to the Bohr model section of the Atom article. If you just want to link to the top of the article only the name of the article is necessary: [[Atom]] or [[atom]] will work.

Linking to something else in Wikipedia or its sister projects: There are too many different variations of this to list all of them. Here are some examples of common ones, however. The stuff to the right of the pipe (|) can be whatever you want it to be:

[[Talk:Tree|Tree]] — a link to the talk page of the Tree article

[[:pl:Drzewo|Tree (Polish Wikipedia)]] — a link to Polish Wikipedia's Drzewo (Tree) page

[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] — a link to a user's user page (or, by extension, the user him/her self)

[[User talk:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] — ditto, except their talk page

[[Help:Link|Linking]] — a link to the help page for linking

[[Wikipedia:Verifiability|Verifiability]] — a link to the policy on Verifiability

[[WP:V|Verifiability]] — ditto, except this is to the shortcut for the policy

[[WP:BURDEN|Burden of proof]] — ditto, except this is a shortcut to the burden of proof section of that policy.

Linking to a URL: One square bracket is used to link to a URL. Syntax:

[http://www.url.com sometext]

Where:

• http://www.url.com is the URL (duh).
• sometext is whatever you want to show up in the link; note that's a space, not a pipe (|) between the URL and the text.

So [http://www.google.com Google] shows Google. Note that the "sometext" is necessary if you want anything other than a numerical reference to show up [http://www.google.com] shows shows [1], so if you want the URL itself to show you need to use [http://www.google.com http://www.google.com] to give http://www.google.com. Do not link to the URL of anything within Wikipedia or any of its sister projects, use the double-square-bracket syntax instead. Links to URL's are called external links and, except for use in footnotes to give sources for text, should not be used in the lede or body of an article; links in an "External links" section have very strict rules, see the "What to link" and "Links to be avoided" of the External links policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links.

Tags, Templates, and Transclusion

I'm not going to go into much detail here, but the important thing to understand is that unlike square brackets which usually only create clickable links to things, {{Something}} (those are "curly brackets") causes whatever "Something" is to be copied from somewhere else, almost always somewhere within Wikipedia, and to be displayed at that point. {{Subst:Something}} causes the code of Something to be copied into your editing code at that point, replacing the {{Subst:Something}} tag. Either form can, and usualy does, take parameters, such as {{Something|red|reason=None|27}}. The problem is that there are some square-bracket codes (see the syntax for images, just below, for example) which work like curly-bracket codes and some curly-bracket codes which work like square-bracket codes.

Images

The most basic syntax to insert an image on the right side of the page or in an infobox is:

[[File:Example.png|thumb|alt=Example alt text|Example caption]]

Where:

• Example.png is the filename of the image file at either Wikipedia or at Wikimedia Commons.
• Thumb makes it a standard-sized image for this use.
• alt= Sets an alternate text which can be seen by folks who have images turned off
• Example caption is the caption under the picture, which may contain links and references

That should go at the left margin of the first line of the paragraph even with the top of the image.

Galleries are beyond the scope of this cheatsheet, but should not be used without good reason. Wikipedia is not to be used as a gallery or repository for images, so images and galleries should only be here to illustrate the subject matter of the article. I'm going to recommend this as the basic syntax, however, starting with a couple of examples:

<gallery mode=packed heights=200px>
File:Old map-Fort Worth-1886.jpg|1886 map of [[Fort Worth]]. Location: [[Amon Carter Museum of American Art]]
File:Remington The Bronco Buster large Amon Carter Museum.jpg|[[Frederic Remington]], ''The Bronco Buster'', 1895-1909. Location: [[Amon Carter Museum of American Art]]
File:[Filename]|[Caption]
File:[Filename]|[Caption]
File:[Filename]|[Caption]
File:[Filename]|[Caption]
</gallery>

Where:

• <gallery mode=packed heights=200px> and </gallery> must each be on a line by itself
• Each image in the gallery is simply a line beginning at the left margin starting with the filename preceded with File:, then a | character, and finished with a caption. The image line may wrap onto following lines in the editor, but must not be broken using the Enter key.
• The caption can be anything you like and may be linked, cited, etc. Citations are generally not necessary since the image page should document the provenance of the image. (The "Location" information is not required and I've just included it in this example as something you can do.)
• When a line of images gets too long in the gallery, it will wrap onto the next following line. If that line is too short, it will be centered.

Citations, reference sections, and footnotes

The footnote:

To create a footnote put this code at the place in the text where the superscripted footnote number is to appear:

<ref name="Somename">Something</ref>

Where

• Something can be a citation or a textual footnote.
• name="Somename" is optional and can be omitted, just using <ref>; it allows this footnote to be used again in the text without reinserting the entire footnote by just inserting <ref name="Somename" /> with no closing </ref>. If you name your references, each name in an article must be unique. Use this method to duplicate a footnote, and don't create a new footnote for the same citation (or footnote text) unless something in the footnote — such as the page number in your reference — is different.

The citation (which goes inside the footnote):

Citations are normally entered using citation templates, of which there are approximately a million. I'm going to recommend that you use the ProveIt gadget in Preferences / Gadgets / Editing, which allows you to chose from 11 basic kinds of sources and automates the use of the templates through an interface that will show up at the bottom of your editing page. ProveIt will insert the <ref>...</ref> tags and the proper citation template. Just put your cursor where you want the citation and click "Add a Reference" in ProveIt. If your particular reference type doesn't match one of those provided by ProveIt, just pick the closest one.

Note that the "<ref> Name" tag on all the ProveIt reference types is to name the footnote (see the stuff about "Somename" just above) and once you've named a footnote, you can insert it again by clicking on "Insert this reference at cursor" on the entry for that note in the left hand column of ProveIt.

The reference section (where the citation shows up):

This is the simplest part of all. Just put {{reflist}} at the bottom of your article and all the footnotes/citations from your article will show up there. If you have a lot of footnotes use {{reflist|30em}} and the system will put your footnotes into columns.

Footnotes other than citations:

As noted above, just about anything can go between the <ref>...</ref> tags. Generally any information that is important enough to go into a footnote ought to just go into the article, but occasionally you may want to put something into a note. Remember that material in footnotes has to be cited just like the material in the article. Non-citation footnotes will just be mixed in with the citation footnotes. While it is possible to create separate sections for your textual notes from your citation notes, that's beyond the scope of this cheat sheet.

Tables

The construction of tables is beyond the scope of this cheat sheet, but here's some basic syntax.

These two sets of code:

{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ Caption title |- ! HeaderR0C1 !! HeaderR0C2 !! HeaderR0C3 |- | ExampleR1C1 || ExampleR1C2 || ExampleR1C3 |- | ExampleR2C1 || ExampleR2C2 || ExampleR2C3 |- | ExampleR3C1 || ExampleR3C2 || ExampleR3C3 |}

{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ Caption title |- ! HeaderR0C1 ! HeaderR0C2 ! HeaderR0C3 |- | ExampleR1C1 | ExampleR1C2 | ExampleR1C3 |- | ExampleR2C1 | ExampleR2C2 | ExampleR2C3 |- | ExampleR3C1 | ExampleR3C2 | ExampleR3C3 |}

both create exactly the same table:

Caption title

HeaderR0C1	HeaderR0C2	HeaderR0C3
ExampleR1C1	ExampleR1C2	ExampleR1C3
ExampleR2C1	ExampleR2C2	ExampleR2C3
ExampleR3C1	ExampleR3C2	ExampleR3C3

Where:

• Everything must start at the left margin except as shown above
• {| must be on a line by itself except for parameters:

• class="wikitable sortable" sets up a basic table style for Wikipedia (but is optional so that you can introduce custom styling) and makes the table sortable if it has a header row

• either wikitable or sortable or both or the entire class parameter may be omitted;

• other html parameters may be added via a style="" parameter, but may not work as expected

• for example,

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto; background: yellow"

will add the general wikitable features, make it sortable, center the table on the page (that's the margin bit), and turn the background of the non-header cells yellow

• ! indicates a header cell and | indicates a regular cell
• |- (new row) and |} (end of table) must each be on a line by itself

Sample articles and infoboxes for Amon Carter Edit-a-thon

Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Bronwyn Oliver

{{Infobox artist}}
{{Infobox museum}}
{{Infobox organization}}